Los Primos del Este release eighth studio album "Dulce Amargo"

Los Primos del Este released their eighth studio album, "Dulce Amargo," on July 16, the Los Angeles Times reported after interviewing the band ahead of its release. The title translates to "bittersweet," and the 14-track project is the latest from the five-piece group that has built its following out of North Carolina since forming in 2017.

The band plays norteno-sax, a subgenre that pairs the accordion sound of norteno with a wailing alto saxophone, in the vein of groups like Conjunto Primavera. Made up of vocalist Geovanni Flores, bassist Ariel Jesus Lopez, accordionist Juan Luis Hernandez, drummer Alejandro Tellez and saxophonist David Tellez, the band has drawn more than 2 million listeners on Latin music's fastest-moving corners of Spotify, where the norteno-sax subgenre grew 39 percent in the US and Mexico in 2024 alone.

"Dulce Amargo" follows the band's 2020 debut, "PDE," and arrives after Interscope Records signed the group in early 2023. Flores said the band has gotten more deliberate with each release. "We thought about every single detail now, even down to the album cover," he told the Times. That cover shows the five members sprawled across the flatbed of a white truck, an image inspired by photographer Alejandro Cartagena's pictures of carpooling laborers in Monterrey, Mexico.

Each member folded a personal story into the album's songs, a process Lopez likened to therapy. "Tremenda" grew out of Lopez being starstruck by a woman, while Alejandro Tellez's "Linda Sonrisa" pushes back against a partner's mistreatment, and Hernandez singled out "Sentimientos," about two people too scared to admit they love each other, as his favorite track. The band also worked in a nod to recent immigration raids, referencing the fatal shootings of two men by ICE agents in Texas and Maine.

The band takes "Dulce Amargo," now on the release calendar, on the road this month, including a stop at the Truck Show Texas Fest on July 25, a test of how far the norteno-sax wave they helped build can carry them next.